


you're ripped at every at every edge up you're a masterpiece

by sultrygoblin



Category: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Tension, Vampires, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23492056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrygoblin/pseuds/sultrygoblin
Summary: one shot - request  - it’s easy to forget that the things you think you want are only a manifestation of being unable to attain them
Relationships: Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive)/Original Female Character(s), Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive)/Reader, Adam/Eve (Only Lovers Left Alive), Adam/Eve (Only Lovers Left Alive)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	you're ripped at every at every edge up you're a masterpiece

**Author's Note:**

> "Hi! I'm not keen on the pregnancy stuff myself and usually skip those fanfics, so I want to ask you exactly the opposite. What would be Tom's or his character of your choosing reaction to the reader telling, she doesn't want to bear children in the near future and maybe never, because it might make her health worse, unable to look after herself and be independent for a couple of years. Sorry, if it's too much, please, answer, if you're not going to do it. Sorry for any mistakes, Eng is my 2nd." - adam has been inhumane for so long, he's forgotten that not every human is a zombie, and they don't always desire the same things.  
> it was nice to have another little tom hiddleston free for all without babies or kids, which i appreciate it. i don’t mind doing them, i just can only come up with so many scenarios and at a certain point feel like it just won’t be authentic. i hope you like this little adam fic that i may have to continue one day

You’re a zombie, but you are not so bad as far as he’s concerned. You don’t ask too many questions, just the obvious ones that pertain to whatever task he’s assigned you. Whenever he calls you’re never out, never doing something, always ready to hop in your beater and take care of whatever odd thing his mind had come up with this time. He remembers asking about it once, you’d given some passing comment about people your age wanting to hang out at bars but you don’t drink. And you hate the smoke that clouds the edges. Adam remembers it simply because something changed. Nothing new or quite important, but something clicked into a different position. He found himself inviting you over to listen to whatever he had recorded. You happily sit in the silence, eyes closed. Breath moving and out as you followed along with the melody in one way or another.

He only even realizes 5 years have gone by because Eve mentions it on their latest video calls, “Her life certainly has revolved around you for quite a while,” there’s a teasing in your voice he’ll never quite understand.

“Hardly a while,” he had argued back and you seem almost aghast.

“Perhaps not for you but 5 years is an awful long time to them,” he hears what you are implying but his mind simply will not grasp onto the concept as it should, “It might be time for you to ask, my love. She’s nearing that age.”

Just this side of 30. An age where inevitably one would begin to think of the future. Of a legacy. But you’ve never mentioned anyone beyond an estranged mother drinking on some beach somewhere. Finally, his fingers manage to brush the thought and curl themselves around it.

“No,” furrowing his brows, both at the thought of what you meant and what you meant for him to do, “If you knew her-”

“But I do, through you,” you smile, cocking you head to the side as you adjust the camera so you may point, “That quilt isn’t yours. She forgot it during the last snow. Do you hide it before she arrives or simply hope you’ll continue not to notice it?”

“You really believe I’m so base?” all but scoffing, though that would happen when you giggled.

“I believe it is intoxicating to feel worshiped. As you have more than shown me,” looking at him with those eyes that reminded him of how long you had truly lived and that it was more than wise to listen to what you told him, “I believe you deserve that when I’m not around. Perhaps even when I am. And I believe that she has some allure or you would’ve fired or eaten her long ago.”

That’s the last you’ll speak on it, which he’s quite sure is done on purpose, forcing him to stew on the words, even if it was just in the back of his mind. He sits for 3 nights with the thoughts, unable to focus on any instrument, any recording. Five years was no paltry amount of time for a zombie. When your life is measured in decades and not centuries, half of one is an incredible amount of time to devote to a person. On the 4th night, he rises just before sunset, grabbing the brick he called a mobile phone, fingers moving on nothing but muscle memory, and holding the phone to his ear.

“Hello there stranger,” he can see the smile on your face, you say it the same way every time, “Something you need?” he hears the TV lower in the background, the moving violins of a black and white horror film.

“Could you stop by tonight?” if only you had known of the technicolor one you’d soon be living, perhaps you would have chosen a different movie.

The background is silent, except for the shuffling of feet for a moment, “I can head over now if you’d like.”

Because you’re doing nothing, except waiting for him to call. Purple has just faded from the sky when he hears you knock. He knows it well. Two hard knocks and the lightest third that seemed to be more knuckles brushed against wood. Opening the door slowly, he steps to the side and welcomes you in as always. The smell of sleep still clings to you and though you tried to brush out the knots with your fingers, it’s much too easy to find more than few you have missed. With familiarity that does nothing but remind him of what his wife had said, you walk into the sitting room and sits on the couch. Carefully, taking up as little space as possible, comfortable but still wary that perhaps you might overstay you welcome. He steps through into the kitchen, grasping one of the bottled waters he had started keeping in there just for you. That would’ve been one of those obvious clues he was so want to miss. You take it from his outstretched hand, thanking him, and opening the cap. The dry brush of your lips sticking ever so slightly together as they parted filled his ears. Noticing a thousand things he hadn’t noticed before.

If only he had been paying attention. You take a long gulp, spinning the cap back on and setting the bottle on the ground between your feet. Adorned in battered canvas that should’ve been thrown out long ago and you had decided to save with all manner of fabrics and creative stitching. He knew the feeling well. One thumbnail scraped along the other, working at the uneven edges of chipped nail polish as if somehow it would keep you calm. But it won’t. The longer they sit here, the higher your anxiety will grow. A part of him wants to see it happen, a reminder that they are two different species that only eclipsed in these moments because he chose them, but it’s unnecessarily cruel and you’ve done nothing to deserve it except become enamored with him. And that wasn’t your fault either, he had allowed two lines to blur. Enough that his wife noticed. The world had felt different in those 3 evenings without you when he hadn’t spent one truly alone in quite some time.

“Is this the part where you eat me?” he hadn’t expected you to break the silence so pointedly.

But he gathers himself in an instant to you, far too long to himself, “Where would you get an idea like that?” and he can’t help the genuine interest dripping from his voice.

“I’m human, I might be slow to start but I get there in the end,” crossing your arms over your stomach, hands tucked under your jacket, eyes glancing around the room as it had a thousand times before, every time finding something new, “Though I had hoped to have more warning we’d be discussing this, I put a lot of work into the research and only have a paltry legal pad to show for it.”

You’re genuinely put out that he had let you pull back the curtain rather than yanking it back yourself. The ghost of a smile twitches the corner of his lips, neither of them miss it, “You are a curious little creature,” their conversation dictating one meaning while his tone gave the thought of another, “And if it were time to make you dinner?”

He doesn’t expect his mouth to water at the thought, but he remembers a thousand more things about you in an instant. You abstinence from mind-altering substances or anything that might tear your lungs. You lived in a smaller apartment, forgiving space for the opportunity to eat well and cleaning, something not offered to you during childhood. He wonders how clean you’d taste, something all over you instead of that medical aftertaste he’d grown used to in recent decades. The chair’s arm splinters and breaks in his white-knuckled grip.

Whatever thought you had, you are lost it to the display he hadn’t realized was coming. He was supposed to be more controlled than that. Perhaps he could have been if his wife hadn’t been so keen on laying it bare and obvious. He couldn’t play the brooding, misunderstood artist with everything rumbling around in his head, and for the first time in a long time, Adam had lost control. When his darkened gaze met your eyes once more he expected fear, it’s what zombies were best at when faced with something just beyond their understanding. He has to accept his wife may just be right when your head is cocked, more confused than anything else.

“If it were?” you throw back at him, leaning forward ever so slightly, “My landlord would sell my stuff and there would be only you to realize my absence,” there’s a matter-of-fact way you say it that angers him.

The way it must anger Eve when he speaks so calmly of his own potential death, “You’re so much like me so very long ago,” the man he was chasing after Eve until you had become his world and would be the only one to notice his disappearance from the Earth, “Shall I help you walk the same path?”

“Who are you trying to convince?” you throw yourself back against the cushion, dropping your arms heavily at your sides, “Take your time, I have just enough to spare.”

Your cheek brushes the quilt and your attention turns, yanking it slowly from the back of the couch with both hands and wadding it up in your lap, “You left that here,” a light flick of his head forward as some sort of point.

“No,” you shook your head, “I thought I left it here, and you told me that was ridiculous because where would it be if not the sitting room,” there’s confusion on your face, you had once had a firm grip on what was happening and there was the sudden sensation of losing it, “I’m a bit lost here, Adam, I might need help to get back on track.”

“You’ll never change, a snapshot of who you are now, nothing will change,” it’s his own words, but the inspiration comes from the same deterrent Eve had tried to poetically lay before him that night, “No children or legacy,” a biological need that hadn’t changed in years.

“Do you really think I am so base?” it’s strange to hear his words echoed back, followed by a sneer, your nails digging into the thick fabric in your lap, “Why is it every person’s assumption that every woman my age is just aching to spawn?” shaking your head and sighing, “That’s disappointing.”

He feels odd at the thought of disappointing you, as if this little crack might shatter the worship he had unknowingly basked in, “That had been my wife’s point,” trying to deflect and finding himself walking straight into another briar patch.

“Wife?” raising your eyebrows, you made to stand, “I have clearly misunderstood the situation,” there’s shame, he hates the sour smell against the rich, honeyed musk of you that he’d found himself taking more and more solace in, even if he hadn’t been able to admit it to himself at the moment.

He’s on you in an instant, your hands let go of the blanket and before the first corner touches the floor, he has you back pressed to his chest, holding folded arms against your chest, the other yanks you head to the side by the very roots of your hair, exposing that long expanse of skin that always lead to an ending. And tonight may lead to a new beginning. He can see the pulse of your carotid artery, it’s far too distracting, but he feels like it’s supposed to be. He’s never turned someone like this before, for this reason.

“Eve didn’t believe me either,” hoping perhaps talking and feigning control would give it back to him, “My family had been useless growing up, they meant as little to me as I had meant to them. I was supposed to find a wife, wasn’t I? Settle down and hope you popped out a few brats, it never felt like me. It never would be me,” you don’t move, just forces yourself to take deep, even breaths but even you know they’re stuttering, “You spend so long thinking about the things you can’t have any more you start to assume those are the things everyone wants.”

The stink of rejection and worry washed from the room, overpowered by a new smell that came from his sudden and consuming touch and the ghost of his lips along your skin, “Wife?”

He smirks, “Nothing slips by you does it,” you try to yank your arms out from beneath his, they’re both aware of how futile it’ll be, “It was your idea,” he’s honest, you have to remind yourself that after centuries relationships were bond to evolve beyond what you mind could wrap around quite yet, you want the chance to try, “You’re a lovely woman, you’d like each other. Far more than I’d like no doubt,” he can already picture them monopolizing each other’s time, it annoys him but there’s something pleasant about the thought of them altogether, it doesn’t seem so lonely anymore.

You swallow hard, feeling his teeth scrape against sensitive skin, “Will I stay here?”

A real smile moves across his face, it’s better than permission, “As if I’d let you leave,” it’s worship.


End file.
